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Trump backtracks on threat to shoot migrants at border

Tonya Becker |Saturday, November 03, 2018

Mark Wilson Getty Images North America

President Donald Trump was expected to announce on Thursday his plans to automatically deny asylum to migrants who try to enter the USA illegally between ports of entry - part of his latest election-season response to caravans heading toward the border.

The president made the claims five days before the USA midterm elections, when voters will determine which party will hold power in Congress and statehouses across the country.

"Seeking asylum is a fundamental human right".

While it's true the underlying laws were the same, the Trump administration mandated anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted.

The suit claims Trump "continues to abuse the law, including constitutional rights, to deter Central Americans from exercising their lawful right to seek asylum in the United States".

Still, Mark Hertling, a retired Army general, wrote on Twitter after Trump's speech that no military officer would allow a soldier to shoot an individual throwing a rock. Immigration advocates contend this would violate current law, which allows anyone entering the country to apply for asylum no matter how they arrived. "What I don't want is I don't want these people throwing rocks", Trump told reporters outside the White House. In addition to deploying the military to the southern border to stave off the caravan, Trump announced plans to try to end the constitutionally-protected right of birthright citizenship for all children born in the U.S. "You put them and all law enforcement in a very hard emotional, let alone security posture".

"Migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry", Trump told reporters in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on November 1.

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Obama separated families in instances where the child was considered to be in danger, for example, or when parentage claims were in doubt.

Pierce said that the timing of the migrant caravan was "a political gift" to Trump because the issue of immigration had served him so well during the 2016 presidential election. "We want them to come into our country", Trump said.

"We're working on a system where they'll stay together", Trump said of families caught after crossing the border.

Trump said atop the ad, "It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country". Caravan leaders said they had expelled a number of troublemakers from the procession, exhibiting some self-policing.

The number of such immigrants had reached a height of 12.2 million in 2007, representing about 4 percent of the US population, before declining due in part to a weakening USA economy. "Opioids are a bigger threat". Just a week ago the caravan was reportedly as large as 7,000 people but Fox News reports that number had dropped down to about 4,000. "They have injured, they have attacked." - immigration speech Thursday. Refugee and asylum experts accuse the president of fearmongering to rally his political base for the midterm elections.

But the government has been flummoxed by what Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, calls the "asylum gap": the inability to stop people from making false claims for asylum and living legally in the US for years while their cases proceed.

It may indeed be a set-up and the Left may indeed be hoping for an election-changing incident, but there is only one national asset with the capabilities, equipment and personnel to handle this situation, and that is the United States military.

Republican lawmakers and other Trump supporters have applauded the deployment.

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